Screw the Super Bowl

THIS Sunday is the year’s finest day of pro football.

There’s no question that Super Bowl Sunday features the most watched sporting event in these here United States. Last year’s game drew close to 124 million viewers, with an additional six million tuning in just for the halftime show, evidence that being in front of our TVs that particular evening has less to do with football than it does with participation in what is arguably American culture’s apex mass event. The one-two punch of jingoism and consumerism, backed up by a relentless statistical and promotional barrage, creates a level of circuses so profound that it’s easy to forget many don’t have bread.

In finished basements, corner bars, and artfully outfitted garages alike, reasons for tuning in to The Big Game (I might have to call it that or face legal scolding) are as diverse as our melting pot can manage: We critique commercials, make a game out of spotting celebrities in the crowd, and hope that half hour halftime show delivers on its months of can’t-miss social media build up. Still, despite the field being taken by the season’s two best teams, conditions for enjoying the contest itself are less than ideal. The day is for Super Bowl spectators, not football fans, who have to sit through that slew of ads for cars, beer, and prescription drugs, along with incessant messaging about everything from upcoming movie releases to reality show premieres to tortilla chip integrity during every pause in play. The incongruity is as discouraging as a backfield tackle; on Super Bowl Sunday football -- the game itself -- plays backup to pageantry.

That’s why this coming Sunday, January 26, 2025, is the ideal day for enjoying pro football. The AFC and NFC championships typically deliver exponentially more gridiron enjoyment than the so-called Big Game. You have four intensely motivated teams playing in two (count ‘em!) two contests. It’s a near-workday’s worth of America’s favorite sport where you actually get to focus on said sport. When distilled from the spectacle of the Super Bowl, the game can be seen as both individual athletic performance and competitive team collaboration at their most sublime. Football’s beauty, which requires players to couple whipcrack decision making with astronomically imposing physicality, is appreciably easier to enjoy during this pair of games. Watch both closely. Pay attention to the players. Note their miraculous blend of reflex, explosiveness, stamina, and strength. That they are able to execute any assignment -- the cat-quick pull of a 315 pound guard, the balletic leap of a free safety swatting a pass from the grasp of an intended receiver, a punter’s freakishly well-placed coffin-corner kick -- knowing they could be knocked into next week gives each play an undercurrent of consequence for action that’s as compelling as the game’s outcome itself.

I have unabashed admiration for the athletes at this level. In the decade I played from pee wee through college, my on-field exploits were modest at best. I scored a couple touchdowns, recovered a few fumbles, and earned a Most Improved Player trophy in my second-to-last season at a small Midwestern college (testament to my evolution from hapless to somewhat competent). I also endured a handful of concussions, a shoulder separation, and a partially collapsed lung. Today, I often walk into rooms and forget why, Advil is a grocery budget line item, and all I want for my birthday is another cortisone shot. Still, I have found few other realms that possess that undercurrent of consequence, whether good or bad, that ripples across a football field. It conveys lessons I still carry forward: You play like you practice. You do your job because the people next to you are counting on you. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. All hackneyed. All corny. All true.

This Sunday affords a fantastic opportunity to enjoy football itself as opposed to getting swept up in the Super Bowl’s surrounding sideshows. The stories that emerge during the games can be epic. The back-and-forth of well-matched rivals is of course riveting, but even blowouts have a melancholy poetry. Watch the eyes of a quarterback on the short end of a lopsided score. He scans the secondary, hoping to salvage something, anything, even if it’s just finding field-goal range against the third-string defense. Take a series or two and focus on one player (especially an offensive lineman, whose role is as foundational as granite yet is criminally underappreciated). Watch him work down to down, adjusting to assignments based on the sets and yardage. Pay attention to the game clock and chain gang, note field position and compare all these factors to the demands of any workday you might have. Now imagine getting the job done while a foaming edge-rusher is clubbing you on the back of the head. On the sidelines, sense the chessmaster pressure between coaches as they select from an infinite roster of plays. Note the defensive stunts, certainly the linebacker blitzes, but also the weaves and crosses among tackles and ends, and the corresponding coverage adaptations from the defensive backs, who are easily the world’s finest athletes. Watch the offensive adjustments, the motion, the shifts prior to the snap of the ball -- a flurry of pre-play activity designed to confuse, distract, optimize. Even after all that, a quarterback will step under center to audible a completely different play broadcast to his ten teammates in ornate codespeak all may or may not correctly decipher. The field is constantly enveloped in the fog of war.

This Sunday, by all means whether you’re a fan of Washington, Kansas City, Philly, or Buffalo, support your team with as much municipal pride as you can muster. And even if you are in the most comfortable seat on the bandwagon, watch the players, watch the coach, and watch the infinite combination of contests in which they all participate. That’s the real appeal of football, which, like the best sports, asks its participants to bring everything they possess, mental and physical, to bear. That’s this sport’s allure and its beauty, creating a quality best summed up by a favorite former coach who ended every practice saying, “It’s only a game. But it’s the only game.”